New Project: Impressions

After careful consideration, I’m finally ready to announce what my main project for 2023 is going to be.  With the conclusion of Blood Magic, it’s time to turn my attention to a new, longform project, and that will be Impressions.  Impressions is a fantasy story blended with the adventure genre set in an Age of Exploration-type context.  It’s also a ghost story, but probably not in the way you’re thinking.

Those of you who have been around my writing for a long time (before I was running this site) might remember Impressions.  It started as one of my long short stories, became a novella, and then became a series of novellas…which, predictably for my writing at the time, I never finished.  In my defense, a big reason I didn’t finish it was because I started writing Fo’Fonas (which I should probably retitle if it ever goes beyond the draft stage), and then I was running this site and writing Blood Magic.  It was also how I discovered that I am definitely not an outliner.

Part of me wanted to start something entirely new this year, and maybe try writing something different from what I usually write – apply myself seriously to science fiction, or attempt historical fiction – but I settled on Impressions for its approachability.  It’s a novel/series length project with plenty of room to stretch, in a very different flavor and subgenre from what I’ve been writing for the past three years, but I already have a solid idea of how the story will go, and I really like the concepts it incorporates.  Plus, I think that what I’ve learned about writing since I wrote those early versions will allow me to craft a really strong story.

I currently envision that Impressions will be a trilogy, and my goal is to finish the first novel this year, including a round of revisions, so that I can begin either shopping the story or preparing to self-publish it (I remain undecided on that count).  Ideally, I would manage to finish the first draft of the second novel while working revisions for the first, but I don’t know if that’s realistic.  It will depend on how much writing time I have, and also how many short stories/novellas with which I distract myself.

Which is a valuable point: I do not intend to stop writing short stories and novellas.  Just like I managed to eek out the occasional short story or novella while working on Blood Magic, I expect to do the same while working on Impressions.  I’m continuing with the Elegant Literature competitions, and I have at least two half-finished stories that I intend to submit to other publications.  Add that to revisions on Verdon’s Tragedy, weekly posts, and weekly book reviews, and this won’t be a cut to my writing productivity compared to Blood Magic – it might even be an increase.  What will be different is that I won’t have the same pressure to finish a story by the end of each month.  It remains to be seen how I best manage my writing goals without those deadlines.  Likely, I will set some standard for myself, whether that be weekly or biweekly or monthly.

There will be plenty more to say about this as the project gets underway, so be sure to read the weekly writing updates to see how I’m doing on all of these lines of effort.  I’m exciting to be finished with Blood Magic and working on something new (even if it’s not entirely new), and I hope that you’re excited to read what comes next.